In the Senate, General Government Appropriations will
hear SB 1468 by Sen. Richter. This bill is the regulation and permitting
companion to HB 1205. If it passes the
committee, both Senate bills will have only one more committee to go before
they go to the floor.
Contact information and talking points are below.
House bills to be
heard Tuesday morning
CS/CS/HB 1205 Regulation of
Oil and Gas Resources CS/CS/HB 1209 Pub. Rec./High-Pressure Well Stimulation Chemical Disclosure Registry
Senate bill to be heard Tuesday afternoon
S 1468 Regulation of Oil and Gas Resources
State Affairs 2015
(for 1205 and 1209)
Rep.
Matt Caldwell, Chair 850-717-5079 matt.caldwell@myfloridahouse.govRep. Neil Combee, V. Chair 850-717-5039 neil.combee@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Ben Albritton 850-717-5056 ben.albritton@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Michael Bileca 850-717-5115 michael.bileca@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. John Cortes 850-717-5043 john.cortes@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Janet Cruz 850-717-5062 janet.cruz@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Travis Cummings 850-717-5018 travis.cummings@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Brad Drake 850-717-5005 brad.drake@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Matt Gaetz 850-717-5004 matt.gaetz@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Shawn Harrison 850-717-5063 shawn.harrison@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Mike La Rosa 850-717-5042 mike.larosa@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Amanda Murphy 850-717-5036 amanda.murphy@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Ray Pilon 850-717-5072 ray.pilon@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Jake Raburn 850-717-5057 jake.raburn@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Irving Slosberg 850-717-5091 irving.slosberg@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Dwayne Taylor 850-717-5026 dwayne.taylor@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. John Wood 850-717-5041 john.wood@myfloridahouse.gov
Rep. Clovis Watson 850-717-5020 clovis.watson@myfloridahouse.gov
ben.albritton@myfloridahouse.gov, michael.bileca@myfloridahouse.gov, matt.caldwell@myfloridahouse.gov, Neil.Combee@myfloridahouse.gov, John.cortes@myfloridahouse.gov, janet.cruz@myfloridahouse.gov, Travis.Cummings@myfloridahouse.gov, Brad.Drake@myfloridahouse.gov, matt.gaetz@myfloridahouse.gov, tom.goodson@myfloridahouse.gov, Shawn.harrison@myfloridahouse.gov, Mike.LaRosa@myfloridahouse.gov, Amanda.murphy@myfloridahouse.gov, ray.pilon@myfloridahouse.gov, Jake.Raburn@myfloridahouse.gov, irving.slosberg@myfloridahouse.gov, dwayne.taylor@myfloridahouse.gov, Clovis.watson@myfloridahouse.gov
General Government Appropriations Subcommittee 2015
Sen. Alan Hays, Chair 850-487-5011 hays.alan.web@flsenate.govSen. Oscar Braynon, V. Ch. 850-487-5036 braynon.oscar.web@flsenate.gov
Sen. Thad Altman 850-487-5016 altman.thad.web@flsenate.gov
Sen. Charles Dean 850-487-5005 dean.charles.web@flsenate.gov
Sen. Tom Lee 850-487-5024 lee.tom.web@flsenate.gov
Sen. Gwen Margolis 850-487-5035 margolis.gwen.web@flsenate.gov
Sen. Wilton Simpson 850-487-5018 simpson.wilton.web@flsenate.gov
hays.alan.web@flsenate.gov, braynon.oscar.web@flsenate.gov,
altman.thad.web@flsenate.gov, dean.charles.web@flsenate.gov, lee.tom.web@flsenate.gov,
margolis.gwen.web@flsenate.gov, simpson.wilton.web@flsenate.gov,
HB 1209 - Fracking public records exemption bill (in House State Affairs)
The immediate issue in HB 1209 is that it
deprives citizens of the information about toxic chemicals that may affect
their water supply. They have a right and a need to protect themselves and
their families from threats to their health and safety. This bill
deprives them of that ability by means of a legal blindfold that makes it
impossible to know about threats until it’s too late. It misuses the law to subvert the public
interest.
The bill also:
-
Sets a low bar to hide the use of toxic chemicals behind the veil of “proprietary business information” (an even broader term than trade secrets)
- Even DEP won’t know what chemicals are used until up to 60 days after the fracking takes place.
- A citizen who wants to find out what chemicals may be threatening his or her family will have to wait while the well operator goes to court to confirm the toxic chemicals really are proprietary business information… and the judge will have to agree that they are because the definition is written into the bill.
- First responders and medical personnel are excluded from access to the information even when it means they won’t be able to protect themselves or help their patients.
The underlying theory of the bill is that the
business of fracking is more important than citizens having access to
information about it and whether DEP is doing its job of protecting them or
exposing them to unnecessary risks.
HB 1205 Fracking permitting/regulation bill (in House State
Affairs)
- HB 1205 uses a very narrow definition of “high pressure well stimulation” that exempts the use of toxic chemicals at low pressures from regulation. The acidization of the Hogan-Collier well would not have fallen under this definition and would be unregulated by this bill.
- Section 5 of the bill preempts local governments from adopting programs to regulate fracking within their jurisdiction - depriving citizens of the right to self-governance.
- Section 6 provides laughably low surety payments: $4,000 the first year and $1,500 thereafter, for each well. But in no event is an applicant to pay more than $30,000 a year, no matter how any wells they have. If anything goes wrong, it’s the taxpayer who will pick up the tab.
- The maximum fine for violations is increased from not more than $10,000 to not more than $25,000 (but the fine could be much lower in either case. No minimum amount is set.)
- What little disclosure is required comes 60 days after the well has been fracked and the damage may already have been done.
SB 1468 Fracking permitting/regulation bill in Senate General
Government Appropriations Subcommittee
- SB 1468 uses the same narrow definition of high pressure well stimulation that would allow many uses of toxic chemicals to go unregulated.
- Section 2 of the bill grants a well operator confidentiality about the use of chemicals for an entire year just for the asking.
- The surety requirement is the same as the one in HB 1205 - laughably low. Taxpayers will feel the pain if there’s an accident. The fines are the same too, bumped to not more than $25,000 (but with no minimum amount.)
- Again, the disclosure is not required until up to 60 days after the fracking takes place, and
- Anything that is proprietary business information is exempt from any disclosure requirement.
On balance,
these bills cause more problems than they solve:
They
do not eliminate risk for Florida citizens - no permitting and regulation
scheme can do that. (Deepwater Horizon had permits and was regulated - 11 men
died and untold environmental damage was done to the Gulf and Gulf States.
As
written, they don’t even cover the activities at the Hogan Collier well that
the Dan Hughes Company carried out (Less water was used than the 100,000 gallon
requirement in the definition in SB 1468)
They
hand the industry a PR victory that allows them to say “Fracking is safe. DEP regulates the industry and we have a
permit! Not only that; we’re
transparent! We give all the information
to DEP - and citizens can go look us up on FracFocus (except for what we choose
to claim as ‘proprietary business information’)
Increasing
fracking in Florida will create a ‘stranded costs’ argument for staying with
fossil fuels and delay transitioning to a clean energy economy.
Other
issues with the fracking bills:
There is no way to be
sure of identifying and adequately plugging/recasing/sealing all possible
abandoned wells within a sufficient radius of the fracking well and its
horizontal branches. Subterranean
natural faults must be taken into consideration as well as man-made conduits.
Still, well casings fail. All technologies fail eventually in some
number of cases. While the probability of failure may be small, the risk
is huge - contaminating the aquifer people use for drinking water would be
catastrophic.
Physicians and first
responders have no way of getting information to save the lives of victims in
case of an accident, or to protect themselves from exposure to toxins.
There are no federal
protections from fracking’s impact on drinking water thanks to the Energy
Policy Act of 2005 that exempted fracking from regulation of underground
injection in the Safe Drinking Water Act (the
Halliburton loophole). Numerous
other exemptions for fracking have been adopted at the federal level: the Clean
Air Act; the Clean Water Act; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; the
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act; the
National Environmental Policy Act; and the Toxic Release Inventory of the Emergency
Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.
Fracking uses a lot of
water, sometimes millions of gallons each time a well is fracked. And when the water is returned to the
surface it can’t be used for anything else because it has so many contaminants
in it. The only thing to do with it is
inject it deep into the ground where (hopefully) it will stay. In a state facing water shortages in some
areas this is not a good use of the water resource.
There
are legitimate concerns about fracking:
Volume
of water used (up to 13 million gallons per well)
Chemical
mixing – spills and transportation accidents
Injection
of chemicals – migration to groundwater and mobilization of subsurface
materials into aquifer
Flowback
and produced water – spills, treatment, leaching, final disposition of pits –
and what happens to the 30% of the injected fluids that are not returned to the
surface?
Wastewater
treatment and waste disposal – contamination of surface and groundwater,
insufficient treatment, transportation accidents.
The National Academy of Sciences discovered that homes within 1 kilometer (2/3 mile) were six times more likely to have six times more methane in their drinking water than those farther away. Ethane levels were 23 times higher.
At least 29 dangerously toxic chemicals are used in 652 products for fracking. They include carcinogens, hazardous air pollutants, and substances regulated under the Safe Water Drinking Act (except for fracking because of the exemption).
